Capsule reviews for April 1

The Dark Horse

While it doesn’t make all the right moves, this crowd-pleasing chess drama from New Zealand — based on a true story — is mildly inspirational without turning heavy-handed or exploitative in its examination of mental illness. It follows Genesis (Cliff Curtis), ostracized by friends and family after his release from a psychological hospital. A former chess prodigy, he finds purpose in mentoring a group of at-risk teens, including his abused nephew (James Rolleston). From there, the script by director James Napier Robertson features some melodramatic contrivances on the way to a national chess competition. However, Curtis is terrific and the film manages some genuine poignancy while sidestepping clichés. (Rated R, 124 minutes).

Darling

The playfully subversive twists in this slow-burning, black-and-white trifle of experimental horror are more frightening separately than collectively. The film follows a young woman (Lauren Ashley Carter) hired to housesit at an urban mansion rumored to be haunted. She later experiences a series of hallucinations that lead to some sadistic consequences. An obvious Polanski fan, director Mickey Keating unleashes some disturbing imagery (there’s even a shower scene with a close-up of the drain) while showing greater concern for atmosphere than plot. However, the lack of sufficient context for the woman or the goings-on around her makes the cumulative result feel arbitrary and emotionally detached. (Not rated, 78 minutes).

Kill Your Friends

Hearkening back to the days when people actually bought albums, this dark music-industry satire stars Nicholas Hoult (Warm Bodies) as a backstabbing British executive in the late 1990s tasked with finding the next superstar or megahit in order to save his own job and the greedy record label for which he works. The script by John Niven — based on his novel — pulls no punches in its depiction of the industry as a decadent, cutthroat culture of misogynists, drug addicts, reckless malcontents and talentless airheads. While that might be true, the film itself leaves little room for emotional investment in such aggressively objectionable characters along the way. (Not rated, 103 minutes).

Sold

This earnest low-budget drama reinforces a worthwhile message about global sex trafficking, but it’s more admirable for its effort than its execution. Lakshmi (Niyar Saikia) is an impoverished Nepalese teenager whose alcoholic father essentially sells her to a brothel in the slums of Calcutta to earn some quick cash. Of course, the move is physically and emotionally debilitating to the girl, who must become resourceful beyond her years to plot an escape. Some scenes are difficult to watch, as necessitated by the subject matter. Yet despite a committed performance by newcomer Saikia, the overall impact is compromised by a lack of subtlety and surprise. (Rated PG-13, 97 minutes).

Standing Tall

Even if its message becomes muddled, there’s a powerful conviction beneath the surface of this well-acted French drama about a juvenile delinquent (Rod Paradot) who consistently runs afoul of Parisian authorities, much to the chagrin of a judge (Catherine Deneuve) and a youth counselor (Benoit Magimel), who target ways to reform the teenager instead of cycling him through the prison system for his abundant misdeeds. Those bursts of provocative social realism are the film’s strongest sequences, so even though the script co-written by director Emmanuelle Bercot lets the story meander in the second half, the performances from Deneuve and newcomer Paradot keep things grounded. (Rated R, 119 minutes).